When I was painting the Giant Spider prototypes for Wargame Atlantic I was already envisioning adding one to my Tau 40K Kill Team. I was a big fan of the old Alien Legion comics back in the day (essentially a sci-fi Foreign Legion mishmash of aliens of all sorts) and I like the concept of Tau auxiliaries.
The base of the conversion is of course a Wargames Atlantic giant spider. The kit includes sci-fi faceplates, bionic legs, and a weapon arm. I swapped in a Tau pulse rifle and aerial, some greenstuff (I wanted him to have a second grasping claw, which the kit lacks), milliput for the cephalothorax armor, and some plasticard.
I also dug through my backlog and pulled out Hasslefree's Maxine- who I never believed was human and has a suspiciously Tau-like gun.
The entire Tau kill team so far:
The Giant Spiders kit is pretty sweet, I was really happy to get my hands on the plastics! Here's the sci-fi version I painted for Wargames Atlantic for comparison:
These are great! I particularly like the earthworm and platypus guy. The grey armour really ties the unit together.
ReplyDeleteThanks! This has been a fun project.
DeleteThese are great! The spider conversion is perfect, particularly the grasping claw that looks as if it were sculpted for the kit.
ReplyDeleteAs much as I enjoy Tau, I wish that GW would lean a bit more into the Empire part and get some real aliens in there like you have done.
Agreed, they stopped with Kroot and Vespid. Time for more!
DeleteOh, that's nice! I mean, the original spider is cool, but your repurposing is genius, I love it!
ReplyDeleteThanks! I'm pretty happy with it :)
DeleteWhy is the spider so adorable? They're not supposed to be cute. I concur with everyone that Tau should have more aliens, but I didn't realize it until reading this post. Well done on the whole team. The hasslefree figs really set the whole group off.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you think it is adorable, I found it to be fairly friendly looking myself, I thought I was a little crazy haha!
DeleteI love the Dirty Dozen vibe you've got going on with the Tau kill team. This newest addition blends in perfectly. The enlarged armour section works a treat. I need to keep an eye out for the plastic kit - the vanilla build also looks great.
ReplyDeleteThanks :)
DeleteI'm looking forward to seeing what people do with the kit!
That’s a great build, and I love the squad effect. The kit feels like one of the things I’ll just have to get regardless of use! The carapace armour really works, I think I’ll need to see about some sort of replica myself.
ReplyDeleteThanks :)
DeleteI really enjoy figuring out how to integrate more things into the Tau team.